News

“Black Ox,” a powerful rural drama from Japan’s Tsuta Tetsuichiro, has been picked up for world sales by Hong Kong and Beijing-based agency Asian Shadows. The film has its world premiere on Friday in the Asian Future section of the Tokyo International Film Festival and will go on commercial release in Taiwan the following week.

Set in the 19th century, “Black Ox” follows the life of a man, transitioning from a hunter-gatherer existence in the mountains to a life in the farm. One day, he comes across an ox, which somehow, he succeeds in leading back to his home. He lives with the animal, which becomes his companion in a life of changing seasons.

The Japan-set film is inspired by the “Ten Ox-Herding Pictures” a series of short poems and illustrations from the Zen Buddhist tradition that depict the path to enlightenment and spiritual awakening.

The cast includes the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng,...

The Halloween franchise has been terrifying audiences since Michael Myers’ masked menace was brought to the big screen in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic. Four decades, 13 films, and a laundry list of rehashings, reboots, and remakes later, the franchise has become a slasher staple.

David Gordon Green’s reboots the Halloween franchise | Credits: Universal Pictures, TIFF

In the spirit of Spooktober – here’s a definitive ranking of all thirteen Halloween movies — from grisly goofs to the horrifying. Let’s slice through the clutter and get to the bloody best.

13. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Yeah, this is the lowest point without contention. Halloween: Resurrection sees Michael Myers in a reality TV setting, featuring Busta Rhymes’ kung-fu moves. This installment, directed by Rick Rosenthal (also responsible for Halloween II), attempts a “reality-tv-gone-wrong” trope that falls short on both scares and coherence. Even fans who appreciate so-bad-it’s-good films will not find something worthy of their time.

With the excitement of a roller coaster reaching its apex, is it time for you to board the hype train that is circulating around the impending release of Deadpool & Wolverine? With the cinematic calendar flipping its pages rapidly, the forthcoming Marvel masterpiece set to burst onto the big screen is just a week away.

Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 3 | Walt Disney Studios

Recently, the internet has been abuzz with the kind of news that makes Marvel fan’s hearts somersault: the role of the Cowboy Deadpool seems to have been filled. If recent rumors are to be trusted, none other than Matthew McConaughey, who famously gave the MCU’s rogues’ gallery a hard pass previously, will play this Deadpool variant.

And if that doesn’t whet your appetite, consider this: the most recent Deadpool & Wolverine teaser has unfurled a tantalizing peek at Lady Deadpool, another variant. And, you guessed it,...

Despite what confused non-fans on the internet say, the series finale of "Lost" is actually pretty straightforward. "I'm real. You're real. Everything that's happened to you is real," an afterlife limbo version of Jack's dad, Christian, tells him as the mystery of season 6's "flash-sideways" begins to come together. "All those people in the church, they're all real too," Christian says, explaining that the bulk of the show actually happened years earlier, and now, these characters have found one another in a collective afterlife. It's simple: everything's real, even and perhaps especially death.

This is a heartfelt message that got driven home a bit too hard during filming on "The End," when something else — a prop knife — turned out to be real, too. In an interview with ComicBook.com in 2021, episode director Jack Bender and co-star Terry O'Quinn recalled a particularly intense moment on set, in which O'Quinn accidentally got his hands on an actual,...

Maximum Carnage. Absolute Carnage. King in Black. Every few years, the wild symbiote corner of the Marvel Universe erupts in a saga oozing with violence, drama, and insanity that only Venom and his kind can deliver. This August, the next milestone symbiote event arrives in Al Ewing and Iban Coello's Venom War.

Writer Al Ewing has been laying the foundation for this story since the beginning of his current run of Venom. That's followed Eddie Brock and his son, Dylan, on separate journeys as the symbiote heroes. However, after both have terrifying glimpses of the future, they realize only one of them can be Venom.

However, they may have some competition.

Thanks to Aipt, we have a first look at the Venom War: Spider-Man tie-in series, and the cover depicts Peter Parker back in black and wearing the alien costume. However, if the chains are anything to go by,...

Carin León feels like he’s been hallucinating the last three weekends.

He’s running on just a few hours of sleep and the high of making history at Stagecoach, where he became the first música mexicana singer to perform at the country festival. Onstage, León looked like any other country act, sporting a sleeveless button-up shirt and a matching cowboy hat. But instead, he performed his rootsy, romantic rolas, backed by a full banda: tubas, accordion, and all.

León sees his efforts to blend country music with música mexicana as a poker match.

Country star Miranda Lambert recently shared a sweet tribute to the original Man in Black, Johnny Cash. So, what did Miranda do recently to pay tribute to the legend?

Johnny Cash Is A Music Icon

Even for people who are not that into country music, they’ve undoubtedly heard of the legend, Johnny Cash. In many ways, Cash is to country music what the Beatles are to rock and roll. However, Cash is remembered for more than just his music, even two decades after his passing.

Johnny Cash was a pioneer, and a maverick of his time. In addition to succeeding on the charts, his music resonated with so many for the authenticity of his lyrics, as much as for the swagger he had as an individual. A true testament to his impact is how many people to this day still cite him and his work as a primary influence,...

Country artist Sam Hunt recently released the official music video for his song called Locked Up. Not only did he channel the original Man in Black, Johnny Cash, but, he also got a little help from his wife.

Sam Hunt Had Other Aspirations Before Country Music

Sam Hunt was born in Cedartown, Georgia. He may be a recognized name in country music these days, but, he had other career aspirations before making it big in music. Originally, Hunt wanted to pursue a career in sports. He played football all throughout his high school and college years.

Hunt played quarterback for the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He had a promising football career on the horizon, and even caught the interest of the Kansas City Chiefs. However, he decided to pack a bag for Nashville and trade in his sports prospects for a music career. Judging by how things have gone,...

The East Asia Film Festival Ireland (Eaffi) and the Irish Film Institute (Ifi) are delighted to announce the programme for the eighth edition of the festival, which will take place this year from Thursday, March 7th to Sunday, March 10th, bringing works from prominent and

emerging writers and directors from diverse cultural and social backgrounds across East Asian cinema to audiences in Ireland. These films reflect on individual and communal experiences, and observe and explore life and relationships in an eclectic mix of fiction, documentary, and classic titles. At the programme's centre is a season of rare screenings by auteur filmmaker Edward Yang (1947–2007) – four masterworks from one of the most iconic figures, alongside Hou Hsiao-Hsien, of the Taiwanese New Wave film movement of the early 1980s.

Each of the four special screenings will be introduced by Taiwanese film producer Chuti Chang. They will be:

A Confucian Confusion , which charts the...

Presented by Lisa Frankenstein, 1989 Week is dialing the clock back to the crossroads year for the genre with a full week of features that dig six feet under into the year. Today, Alex Divincenzo revisits the great slasher slump of 1989.

While horror fans often look back on the ’80s with a nostalgic glow, 1989 was not what most would consider a strong year for the genre — particularly when compared to the embarrassment of riches spawned by the rest of the decade. Not even Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger were safe from the slasher slump.

Each franchise had its ups and downs across a cumulative 17 movies in the ’80s, but the decade came to a close with low points — creatively and financially — in all three sagas: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

Each winter, we invite Notebook contributors to take part in our unique twist on the year-end poll. Rather than tally their favorite new releases from the year, they’re asked to creatively pair a new release with an older film they watched for the first time that year: a “fantasy double feature.” We’re delighted by the range of responses this year; this year’s doubles offer up inspired combinations of moving-image art that might otherwise slip through the cracks.We invite you to plunge into this collective viewing scrapbook, which captures our writers at their most imaginative, adventurous, and thoughtful—maybe it'll motivate you to test some of these out (or come up with your own) over the holidays.We hope you enjoy the read, and find our sixteenth year appropriately sweet!{{notebook_form}}Paul AttardNEW: Skinamarink + Old: Room Film 1973Homebound horror films shrouded in darkness, ones that transform...

The Shape is back! Well, of course he is. He can't be killed, after all, and the "Halloween" franchise must go on to ensure that Michael Myers will still be terrorizing the fine folks in Haddonfield for generations to come. "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers" continued the trend established in "Halloween 4" and "Halloween 5" of weirdly copying the sequel titles of the "Pink Panther" movies starring Peter Sellers. There was "The Return," then "The Revenge" and now it was time to dive a little deeper into "Halloween" lore, for better or worse.

Honestly, it was something of a miracle that "Halloween 6" even got made at all. After becoming the first in the series to actually premiere on Friday the 13th, "Halloween 5" was the lowest grossing movie of the franchise when it opened in October of 1989. After the development for "Halloween 6" stalled multiple times due to legal issues,...

Movies immerse their viewers in different galaxies and fantastical universes. The success of iconic franchises such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings is intimately linked to their respective storylines, world-building, and interesting characters. Film producers such as George Lucas and Peter Jackson captivate their fans through exactly this wide range of different cinematic elements that goes into their movies. Besides exciting characters and universes, a few of these movies feature an extensive selection of overpowered items that are just as iconic as the franchises themselves.

Taking a closer look at some of these famous movies reveals the exact power of these items and why viewers might have underestimated their destructive, as well as practical, potential. From lightsabers to wands, there are a lot of overpowered items in movies.

The Neuralyzer Could Have Been Used for Both Evil and Good <img alt="Agent K using a Neuralyzer in Men in Black" data-image-id="330109" height="766" src="https://static0.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/7.-Neutralizer-Men-in-Black.jpg" width="1532" />

Trivia

Man in Black had an IMDb...

Chinese director Wang Bing found joy in latest film “Youth (Spring),” focusing on young textile workers. But as he continues to work on his trilogy, things might get a bit darker.

“Their age is one of the factors here: they are so young and it’s just a happy time in your life. You are experiencing so many things, for example romantic relationships. Their actions are not entirely controlled by rationality, which made for vivid footage,” he tells Variety ahead of traveling to IDFA, where he is this year’s Guest of Honor.

“But here’s the thing – this trilogy is not finished yet. I will finish the second and third part by 2024 and they are not the same [as the first]. Maybe when it is completed, it will feel completely different?”

Despite winning multiple awards over the years, including Locarno’s Golden Leopard for “Mrs. Fang,” making films hasn’t necessarily gotten easier,...

Launching an ambitious program of compelling global and Czech work, the 27th edition of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival opened on Tuesday, kicking off six days of more than 350 film screenings by veteran and new filmmakers.

Fest head and founder Marek Hovorka, who launched the event in his hometown in 1997, introduced what is now Central and Eastern Europe’s main event for docs, defining the fest mission as “a celebration of films, image, sound, gestures and diversity.”

The films selected this year are “all very original,” he told the opening gala audience, and show filmmakers “perceive the world very differently.”

The fest, raising its curtain in the location that remains its home, the communist-era Dko “house of culture,” as the pre-1989 regime dubbed such multi-purpose spaces, attracts for its launch hundreds of guests seated at white-decked tables, sipping local wine.

Opening night moderators embraced an ironic take on AI,...

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is considered the worst film in the franchise, with a poor rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The movie was criticized for its convoluted plot, lack of suspense, and reliance on typical slasher tactics. Quentin Tarantino had an intriguing concept for Halloween 6, involving a road trip with Michael Myers and the Man in Black, but ultimately passed on the project, potentially missing an opportunity to improve the franchise.

For a franchise as vast as Halloween, it's no secret there are a few duds in the bunch, and one of the most memorably bad installments is Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, which could have actually been saved if this famous directors had taken the reins. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is the sixth installment in the Halloween franchise, which follows the murderous activities of serial killer, Michael Myers. Released in 1995, Halloween 6...

The Portuguese doc fesitival has a reputation for showcasing formally bold films with attitude.

As it celebrates its 21st edition this year, Doclisboa is one of the most radical and innovative of the autumn documentary festivals. It opens today (October 19), taking place in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon until October 29.

Festival director Miguel Ribeiro prides himself on programming films with attitude and this year’s international competition includes shorts screening in the same section as features. Six are world premieres.

Whether they are dealing with politics, art or music, the titles screening in Lisbon tend to be opinionated and formally...

Fix up and look sharp, NYC filmgoers: Wang Bing‘s latest, “Youth (Spring),” begins its US theatrical rollout at Metograph next month. And the new documentary is just the first in a trilogy of new films Wang Bing has worked on since 2014. So if “Youth (Spring)” ends up a year-end favorite, get ready for two more films featuring the same people in due time.

Read More: ‘Youth (Spring)’ Review: The Kids Are Underpaid & Flirty [Cannes]

Premiering at Cannes earlier this year alongside Wang Bing’s other new film, “Man In Black,” “Youth (Spring)” charts the social and economic evolutions in 21st-century China through the lives of young migrant textile workers in Zhili, a factory town outside Shanghai.

Continue reading ‘Youth (Spring)’ Trailer: The First Doc In Wang Bing’s New Trilogy Arrives At Metrograph On November 10 at The Playlist.

Wang Bing might not have released any new films in the last half-decade, but that is only because he’s been hard at work shooting his new trilogy. Captured between 2014 and 2019, the director’s new project documents the social and economic transformation of 21st-century China through the eyes of young migrant workers laboring in textile factories in the town of Zhili, outside Shanghai. Youth (Spring), one of two new films from the director to premiere at Cannes alongside Man in Black, will now get a theatrical release from Icarus Films starting on November 10 at Metrograph and the first trailer has arrived.

Ethan Vestby said in his review, “Wang Bing’s Youth (Spring) is the first of a supposed trilogy shot from 2014 to 2019 chronicling Millennial and Gen Z (consciously always listing the age when onscreen text introduces a new character) China. And judging by the three-and-a-half-hour runtime, it seems like many...

UK cinema distributor the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Ica) has launched a screening programme for independent films that have not managed to secure UK distribution.

The programme, named Off-Circuit, “intends to address a shared frustration from audiences and industry alike around the fact that so many significant works acclaimed internationally never reach UK screens,” according to Ica Cinema curator Nicolas Raffin.

“Off-Circuit’s main purpose is to contribute to filling that gap, by bringing a selection of these works to our screens, on a week-long run.”

The programme, which launches today (October 5), has selected four films for its inaugural run:...

Japan heads the nominations, followed by China.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist heads the nominations for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, with nods in four categories including best film, best director, best screenplay and best cinematography.

The Japanese feature premiered at Venice where it picked up both the jury and Fipresci prize, and centres on a father and daughter in a rural village, whose peaceful lives are disrupted by proposals to build a camping site in their area.

Hamaguchi’s latest film, following Oscar-winner Drive My Car, was just ahead of China’s Snow Leopard by the late Tibetan director Pema Tseden,...

The programme for Doclisboa’23 is now known; the festival will take place between 19 and 29 October at the usual venues: Culturgest, Cinema São Jorge, Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema and Cinema Ideal. In all, the 21st edition of Doclisboa is showing 250 films from 42 countries, including 35 world premieres and 39 Portuguese films. The films reveal the pulse of the world and those who inhabit it.

Doclisboa travels to the inside of the human brain through the lens of Werner Herzog (Theater of Thought), and to the pressing issues of work in The Liberated Broom, Listen to the Story I Was Told, by Coline Grando; delves into memories of past wars and to the current war in Ukraine; film archives; music; and dance.

The press conference was held this morning at Culturgest and was hosted by Miguel Ribeiro (Director of Doclisboa), Mark Deputter (Chairman of the Board – Culturgest), Marco Guerra (Head of the Cultural...

The Portuguese festival showcases documentaries from around the world.

The 21st edition of DocLisboa will open with Wang Bing’s Man In Black, and will close with Baan from Portuguese director Leonor Teles.

Man In Black premiered at Cannes and Baan made its debut at Locarno earlier this year.

The festival will take place in Lisbon from October 19-29.

Wang Bing, via videoconference, and Telles both participated in the festival press conference on September 28 at which festival director Miguel Ribeiro revealed this year’s programme in full.

Bing explained his film profiles 86-year-old Wang Xilin, one of China’s most important contemporary classical composers,...

Six world premieres in the International feature competition.

Sarah Mallegol’s Kumva – Which Comes From Silence, is among the 10 features selected for the international competition of Germany’s Dok Leipzig festival, taking place from October 8-15.

Kumva is one of six world premieres in the section and sees children and parents who experienced the Rwandan genocide of 1994 speak about the atrocity which has traumatised generations.

Scroll down for the full list of features in competition

The film is in Kinyarwanda and French language; it is a debut feature for French director Mallegol.

The competition also includes the world premiere of Stillstand,...

Wang Bing, an essential Chinese filmmaker and a regular presence in Doclisboa’s programme, returns to the festival with Man in Black, the opening film of the 21st edition, scheduled for 19 October, 9pm, at Cinema São Jorge. Leonor Teles’ first feature-length fiction film, Baan is the closing film of Doclisboa’ 23 – and will have its Portuguese premiere on 29 October 29, 9pm, at Culturgest.

In Man In Black, Wang Bing – author of works such as Fathers and Sons (Doclisboa 2014) and Dead Souls (Doclisboa 2018) – portrays the body and soul of Wang Xilin, a Chinese composer and dissident. Using excerpts from Xilin’s symphonies, the filmmaker registers the horrors recalled by the octogenarian composer, stories of dehumanization in a country and a regime in permanent upheaval. Wang Xilin will be in Lisbon for the opening session of the 21st edition of the festival.

On 29 October, it’s Leonor Teles’ turn. Baan (“house” in Thai), the...

Leonor Teles’ feature fiction debut Baan will close the festival.

Wang Bing’s Man In Black will open the 21st edition of Portugal’s documentary film festival Doclisboa (October 19-29).

Bing’s latest feature explores the life of Wang Xilin, a Chinese composer and dissident. The film had its world premiere at Cannes, in Special Screenings, where the Chinese director’s other film Youth (Spring) screened in competition.

‘Man In Black’: Cannes Review

Closing the festival is Leonor Teles’ feature fiction debut Baan which follows a young architect’s love life across Lisbon and Bangkok. The film premiered in competition at Locarno.

Acclaimed director Wang Bing, this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, will be using his IDFA platform to highlight nonfiction cinema of his native China.

The festival, which runs from Nov. 8-19, announced the 10 films Bing has selected to be screened at IDFA – one of the perquisites of being named guest of honor. Among the documentaries he’s choosing to highlight are Old Men (1999), directed by Lina Yang; Wheat Harvest (2008), directed by Tong Xu, and IDFA Bertha Fund-supported Last Train Home (2009) by Lixin Fan, “documenting the millions of migrant factory workers that travel home for Spring Festival each year.” (Scroll to see Bing’s full top 10 list).

Director Wang Bing attends the Cannes Film Festival May 19, 2023.

The documentaries chosen by Bing “and their politics are subtle in their film language,” IDFA noted in a release, “representing a wave of filmmaking rarely shown internationally.

Icarus Films has taken North American rights to Youth (Spring), the newest feature from Venice prizer winner Wang Bing, which earlier this year became one of the first documentaries admitted to Cannes’ main competition in decades. A release date has not yet been disclosed.

Soon to screen at both the New York Film Festival and TIFF, the doc shot over the course of five years is set in Zhili, China, 120 miles from Shanghai. In this city dedicated to textile manufacturing, young workers come from rural regions crossed by the Yangtze River. They are in their early 20s, sharing dormitories and snacking in the corridors. They work tirelessly to be able one day to raise a child, buy a house, or set up their own workshop. Friendships and romantic affairs are made and unmade according to the seasons, financial difficulties, and family pressures.

The film from House on Fire, Gladys Glover Films,...

Exclusive: Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights for Portuguese director Pedro Costa’s short film The Daughters of Fire, following its buzzy world premiere in Cannes this year.

Set against the backdrop of Costa’s stomping ground of the Atlantic Ocean island of Cape Verde, the film follows three sisters who are separated by the eruption of the local Fogo Volcano.

They remain bound in spirit, singing the same words: one day, we will know why we live and why we suffer.

The Daughters of Fire received an enthusiastic reception in Cannes when it played as Special Screening Jean-Luc Godard’s Trailer of the Film that Will Never Exist: “Phony Wars” and Wang Bing’s 2023 Palme d’Or contender Man in Black.

For its North American theatrical release in late 2023 or early 2024, Cinema Guild is planning to play the short alongside Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s Berlinale 2023 Encounters title In water,...

The man is not in black. He is in nothing at all. Wearing his nakedness calmly, like a fact so obvious it requires no explanation, an 86-year-old Chinese male stands up slowly in the otherwise empty gallery of Paris’ famous Bouffes du Nord theatre. The artfully peeling, faded-grandeur interior, dim but for gathered pools of warm light, booms with the sound of his wooden seat swinging back into place, then with the creaks of the floorboards under his bare feet. This is the arresting opening to Chinese documentarian Wang Bing’s other Cannes 2023 film, “Man in Black,” a project so diametrically different from his Competition entry “Youth: Spring” that it feels hard to credit them both to the same person. Perhaps we shouldn’t. This brief but profoundly moving film represents such a consummate collaboration between director, cinematographer, editor and subject that its authorship could be recorded as a four-way tie.

Ed Harris is hoping to contend at the Emmys one last time for the HBO sci-fi series “Westworld,” which signed off last year after four seasons. Based on Michael Crichton‘s 1973 movie of the same name, the show comes from Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan and follows a collection of people indulging themselves at a highly-sophisticated theme park that depicts the wild west and is populated by advanced AI.

The show continued to build on its theme with each season and features some wonderful actors, not least including Harris. Harris plays the Man in Black, a sadistic and brutal man who is determined to find out the secrets of the theme park. In the final seasons, Harris also plays William, who is a host who replaces the original Man in Black. In his viciousness and snarling performance, Harris is clearly having a great time on screen and critics have noted...

According to Midnight Mass creator Mike Flanagan, The Dark Tower's path to television screens looks promising.

"That's the one I want to do the most," Flanagan said of The Dark Tower to audiences at the Tribeca Film Festival, per Entertainment Weekly. "I have the rights. We're on strike. But I'm very optimistic that we're on a great path with that, we have good partners, we can't talk about it, but I think it's going to happen. I can't say for certain, but we look good. So I'm hoping that's up there."

Related: Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's Is Already Using Stephen King's Best Tricks

Bringing the story of the Gunslinger and the Man in Black to the small screen is not Flanagan's first foray into the Stephen King universe. He previously wrote and directed an adaptation of King's Gerald's Game for Netflix, which was well-received by both critics and audiences.

The Daughters of Fire.Three square images, placed side by side on the screen. The full frame is as wide as CinemaScope, which Fritz Lang famously said was only suitable for snakes and funerals. On the left, a woman stares forward as she stalks, like a Jacques Tourneur character, toward no certain destination; as she does so—singing, half her face shrouded in shadow—she passes through a seemingly endless corridor of ash, an ever-rotating carousel of clay streaked with wisps of fire. In the center frame, another woman lies prone, bent over on the shores of a volcanic beach. The sea laps in apocalyptic, dusky light behind her, the horizon stretches out to the limits of vision; uncertainly, she heaves her body upright to sit as she sings. In the far-right frame, another woman peers out from around a doorframe, staring into the camera, also singing in direct counterpoint with the other two women,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSLeos Carax in Holy Motors (2012).On Monday, SAG-AFTRA members voted 97.9 percent in favor of a strike if their contract negotiations stall. This sets the stage for an industry-wide work stoppage in solidarity with the Writers Guild, even after the weekend’s news that the Directors Guild had reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.Away from Hollywood, CG Cinema have confirmed that Leos Carax has wrapped production on a new film, C’est pas moi, set to release in 2024. This is a "free format" self-portrait, spanning the "major stations" of Carax's four-decade career amid "the political tremors of the time." The images shared by CG Cinema feature Denis Lavant in character as Monsieur Merde, made infamous in...

We arrived. We watched. We reviewed. We lost a lot of sleep and we battled the ticketing system. Combining our efforts to bring you all the Cannes Film Festival goodness, the dust has settled and we are pleased to present a snapshot of what Nicholas Bell & I really dug at the 76th edition via our Top 10 films list plus a complete overview of the films we saw, the grades we assigned and direct links to our reviews.

Nicholas Bell:

10. Un prince – Dir. Pierre Creton

09. Anatomy of a Fall – Dir. Justine Triet

08. Man in Black – Dir.…...

The 2023 Cannes Film Festival’s documentary slate featured probes into human rights abuses and profiles of unsung visionaries. At least one movie falls into both categories. This year marks the second time that the L’Œil d’or, first presented in 2015, has gone to two films. It’s also the first time in 19 years that nonfiction has competed for the Palme d’Or. Do you think any of the following titles 10 should be on our radar come Oscar season?

See Cannes 2023 round-up: Top 25 movies to emerge from this year’s festival [Photos]

“Anita”

Anita Pallenberg is known by a small group, and still only as a muse rather than an actress, fashion icon and writer. Laird Borrelli-Persson (Vogue) describes her as a “troubled woman who has come close to being mythologized out of existence and sidelined by the juggernaut that is The Rolling Stones.” Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill made “Anita...

Every year, the Cannes Film Festival program yields its riches. And every year, documentaries are kept to the selection sidebars, with the exception of just three over the years, two of which won the Palme d’Or: “The Silent World,” co-directed by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle in 1956, and Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” in 2004.

This year, out of 16 documentaries in the Official Selection, two are in the Competition, the first time nonfiction titles have joined that storied roster since Moore’s inclusion.

This is progress, but a quick glance at the latest Palme d’Or predictions reveals that Wang Bing’s “Youth” (marking the first 3.5-hours of an eventual 10-hour triptych) and “Olfa’s Daughters” from Kaouther Ben Hania are not high on the list of likely winners. Both are recognized by critics as boundary-pushing examples of the form but seem unlikely to become consensus award picks from Ruben Östlund’s eclectic Competition jury.

Award-winning US producer and distributor Karin Chien, whose latest co-production, “Man in Black,” is one of two films by Chinese director Wang Bing running in Cannes’ official selection, shared her experience with the crowd during a masterclass at Cannes Docs, the Film Market section dedicated to documentary films.

“Man in Black” premiered at a special screening in Cannes on May 22. Wang’s other film selected in this year’s edition is main competition title “Youth.”

In the talk, moderated by Documentary Association of Europe co-founder Brigid O’Shea, Chien put on her distributor’s hat to talk about a job she said was “not pitched enough but [represented] some of the most meaningful work she [had] ever done.”

“To bring these films to the U.S., that otherwise would never have come here, to be able to connect the films with the audience and send every quarter back to the filmmakers – the...

Chinese director Wang Bing is more than content to take his time. His documentary Youth (Spring), which premiered in competition at Cannes last Thursday, runs three-and-a-half hours long. His second Cannes film, Man in Black, runs considerably shorter at a mere 60 minutes, but it too unfolds patiently.

Man in Black, a Monday night premiere in the festival’s Special Screenings section, begins with an elderly man moving slowly and silently in the shadows of an empty auditorium. It takes some moments for the audience to realize he is nude. He holds a railing as he makes his way along an aisle. As he descends a staircase a classical score erupts with percussive force.

Wang Xilin in ‘Man in Black’

This is Wang Xilin, one of China’s leading classical composers, laid bare. The camera follows as he makes his way to the stage, entering a key light. It pans around his feet,...

The first thing anyone ever says about the work of venerated documentary filmmaker Wang Bing is that he makes fascinating but long films. Like, really, really long. His debut West of the Tracks (Tie Xi Qu), about a crumbling industrial district, screened in two different versions, one five and the other nine hours, give or take. Crude Oil — as the name might suggest, a portrait of oil workers — spanned 14 hours.

Two of his films are screening at Cannes this year — main competition entrant Youth (Spring) and special screening Man in Black — so at three and half hours and 60 minutes, respectively, in Wang terms they’re practically shorts. Kvetching about length aside, Youth (the parenthetical subtitle Spring heralds a projected series of films) is consistently engaging, even if it’s not always easy to see what the whole package is trying to say that couldn’t be said with more brevity.

Check the label on that garment hanging in your closet. If it reads “Made in China,” there’s a chance it was stitched together by one of the characters in Wang Bing’s documentary Youth (Spring), or someone like them.

Youth (Spring) – one of two documentaries admitted into main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, which hadn’t welcomed a documentary into that prestige category in almost 20 years – was filmed over a five-year period in China’s Zhili City, known as the country’s capital of clothing manufacture. Every year young people from rural areas in Anhui and other provinces pour into the urban center looking for work. Thousands of privately owned garment “workshops” stand ready to employ them, or perhaps we should say exploit them.

‘Youth (Spring)’

Wang’s hand-held camera goes inside the cluttered, fluorescent-lit workshops where young men and women sew garments at a furious pace, their...

Exclusive: Ed Harris (Westworld), Sonequa Martin-Green (Star Trek: Discovery) and Natalie Morales (No Hard Feelings) have closed deals to lead My Dead Friend Zoe, a dark dramedy about two generations of veterans, family and friendship, which Kyle Hausmann-Stokes will direct in his feature debut.

The film written by Hausmann-Stokes and A.J. Bermudez tells the story of a female veteran (Martin-Green) engaged in a mysterious but comfortable friendship with her wise-cracking (and dead) best friend from the Army (Morales). When the vet is summoned to the remote lake house of her estranged Vietnam vet grandfather (Harris), she is tasked with providing the one thing he refuses…help.

Pic is based on Merit x Zoe, a short that Hausmann-Stokes co-wrote and directed last year, and both films draw inspiration from his real-life experiences during and after the military. A graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, Hausmann-Stokes served five years in...

Cannes Docs, the Marché du Film sidebar dedicated to documentary film, has unveiled the line-up of its Doc Day, which unspools on May 23, as the final event in at Cannes Docs.

Veteran U.S. cinematographer and documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, president of Cannes Festival’s Œil d’or Jury which hands out an award to the best doc in Cannes’ Official Selection, will open the morning session in a conversation with writer, director and producer Guetty Felin.

Entitled “Cinema and the Pleasures of the Impossible,” it will explore the many ways filmmaking creates possibilities to search for the invisible, to bring life to the dead and to time travel in their lives.

“It’s an exciting and side-stepping angle compared to usual industry talks,” explains the head of Cannes Docs Pierre-Alexis Chevit, “which we really like at Cannes Docs, because that is what we’re trying to do: Offer talks...

After three long years of being cut off from the rest of the world due to pandemic travel restrictions, China’s film industry will be out in force at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

As China’s strict zero-Covid requirements were only lifted at the beginning of this year, not many Chinese film execs attended Berlin Film Festival in February, although larger numbers made it to Hong Kong Filmart in March. Although accreditations were still being processed at the time of writing, around 250 professionals from China and Hong Kong are expected to attend Cannes Marche du Film (May 16-24), compared to just 55 in 2022.

But that number is still way below the Marche’s record of 620 Chinese professionals in 2019. Flight prices between China and Europe are still prohibitively high, and many execs contacted by Deadline said they were still waiting to see if their visa applications would be processed in time.

Get your tux out of the mothballs and brush up on your French phrasebook: After feverish speculation about what might premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, the lineup has finally been announced.

Thierry Frémaux’s annual press conference, which you can watch below, has wrapped and we now know what will debut on the Croisette when Cannes takes place May 16-27. We already knew there’d be a spot for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” that Harrison Ford and James Mangold would be bringing fedora couture with “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (filling this year’s blockbuster spot reserved by “Top Gun: Maverick” last year), and that, controversially, the Johnny Depp-starring film “Jeanne du Barry” by Maïwenn would open the festival.

Among the titles now confirmed to appear at Cannes are Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” Todd Haynes’ “May/December,...